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A review of violent events involving militant Islamist groups in Africa over the past year reveals a mixed picture, with some groups showing increased activity and others diminished. This variance underscores the importance of local factors affecting each context.
Program materials for the 2017 Managing Security Resources in Africa 2.0 program. Click here for syllabus, readings, and presentation slides.
Program materials for the 2017 Africa's Contemporary Security Challenges program. Click here for readings, slides, and video of presentations.
Conflicts of interest within Africa's fisheries sector enable unsustainable exploitation by foreign fishing firms and undercut the political will needed to build more robust surveillance and prosecutorial capacity.
The distinction between legitimate and illicit business in Africa is fluid due to the significant size of informal trade on the continent. At the same time, globalization has allowed organized criminal groups to link up with international networks, including violent extremists.
“To be an effective leader, you must want to empower those following you,” says General Martin Luther Agwai in an interview with the Africa Center for Strategic Studies.
“Climate change causing conflict” arguments are not supported by the evidence. There is no evidence, for example, that pastoralist versus farmer conflicts in Africa are due to climate change. There is, however, much evidence that these conflicts are the result of government interference in local distribution of resources, access to land, and even the disappearance of state presence.
ECOWAS leadership in the Gambia crisis offers lessons for future regional security cooperation in Africa.
As ISIS’s influence and territorial control in the Arab world have waned, so too have its reputation and ideological appeal in Africa, writes the Africa Center’s Joseph Siegle.
Gambia narrowly averted a regional crisis when Yahya Jammeh stepped down. The coordinated action of neighboring countries and regional organizations could provide a model for future governance crises.
Islamist terrorist groups in the Sahel and Sahara are attempting to exploit pastoralist grievances to mobilize greater support for their agenda, write Kaley Fulton and Benjamin Nickels.
The geographic spread and frequency of violent events linked to militant Islamist groups in Africa has expanded steadily since 2010, with a peak in 2015. Eight African countries now regularly face attacks by an assortment of militant Islamist groups.